A house. A pair of fire-engine red patent leather flats. A new car. These are just some of the many items that users on the new Zebo.com Web site have listed as things they wish to own. With unlimited listing ability, users can wish for anything and everything they can imagine.

“In many ways, for the younger generation, you are what you own,” a friend once told Roy de Souza, the creator and CEO of Zebo.com. He took the phrase to heart and with the launch of his site, users are now able to list their possessions and search for other members who have the items they want.

De Souza said he officially launched his site on Sept. 12 and already ZEBO has 4.9 million users, many ranging from in age from 16 to 25.

“We started building an e-commerce site about two years ago, on a very small scale,” de Souza said. “Early this year is when we focused the model on users discussing things they own.”

In the month since ZEBO became an official site, its popularity and recognition have skyrocketed.

Newspaper articles have been written in San Francisco, where ZEBO is based, and even in the New York Times. De Souza said he expects the site’s popularity to grow even more with the new features ZEBO will be adding.

“People want to discuss their products,” de Souza said. “In the long term, we’ll make it easy for them to talk about products and learn about products and even buy products from their friends.”

The ZEBO team also plans to launch a brand new feature in early November, and although the team cannot yet disclose the feature’s information, de Souza promises that it will be unique for the industry.

ZEBO user Jillian Nickell became a member about six months ago, while the site was still in its early stages. She signed up with a couple of friends, but then forgot about the site until early September.

“I was still getting e-mails about my account,” Nickell said. “So after a shopping trip in September I returned to fill out some stuff I bought. I kind of like the idea of keeping an inventory of my stuff.”

Though Nickell was originally more excited about her account on MySpace, another social networking Web site, she found that the more she used ZEBO, the more she discovered.

“MySpace is about how many friends and comments you have,” Nickell said.

“(ZEBO) is unique in that it’s purely about shopping, what you want and what you’ve got. I wished I could add pictures of the stuff I bought as well. Then I realized you could personalize your page, like (you can on) MySpace,” she added.

Nickell said that she also enjoys using her ZEBO account to “find people who know about electronics or cars or apparel and get advice.”

Another new member to ZEBO, Lisa Butler, signed up in August of 2006. Butler said she heard about ZEBO from a friend online and decided to “check it out.”

She said she has told some of her other friends about ZEBO in hopes that they would join as well. Although she also has a MySpace account, Butler thinks that “ZEBO is unique in its own way.”

“I like the site because you can make new friends, talk about stuff you own and stuff you want to own, as well as things you have bought,” Butler said. “It helps in making friends with the same kind of interests.”

Many users list electronic devices as their possessions and searching for iPods will give users 6,500 hits.

Other members specify the types of products they own by color. According to a San Francisco news article provided by Tyler Wright, one of the co-founders of ZEBO, 23 percent of users own something black, followed by 19 percent who have pink possessions.

De Souza has noticed that, to many, expensive brand names hold significance.

“A lot of people say they own ‘a shirt,'” de Souza said. “But some people say they own a ‘Lacoste shirt.'”

De Souza said that he has noticed other members that own Chanel sunglasses.

“They’ve gone out and bought those sunglasses,” he said. “They cost a lot of money. They want to type it out on the page and tell everyone in the world.”

In the current “material world,” consumers choose from a multitude of brands.

“The ones you choose make quite a statement about yourself,” de Souza said. “People are very, very proud of the sort of brands that they own.”

ZEBO’s members can also list what they would like to possess.

De Souza said that “what people want tends to be more aspirational.”

Topping the list of wants is money, but others list such items as a recording studio or unlimited travel. One user would like a yacht for her father.

Not all of ZEBO users concern themselves with image and some possessions are listed just for fun.

“There are a lot of things that people put up that we hadn’t initially expected,” de Souza said.

Among these, people say that they possess islands, gold rings and broken hearts.

One very specific user claims to own a “20-square-foot room in a four room apartment,” de Souza said. “They’re quite creative. People list what really matters to them and that’s what’s exciting about this site.”